“Maurice?” she said as she stood up.
“Over here,” The words sounded funny, as though they came from far away, but he was okay now. He had to be okay, or he would never pull it off. Maurice stepped out of the shadows and waved to her.
Mary Jane smiled and ran over to him. He grabbed her hand and pulled her into the ruins. It was happening, just like all the other times.
“Isn’t this place neat?” he said, keeping his voice under control.
She shivered. “Kind of creepy, if you ask me.”
“Nobody will bother us here.”
“Good.” Mary Jane grinned impishly. “Are you gonna try and kiss me?”
Maurice flushed. The idea of kissing her sickened him. She was acting like a slut. He smiled, because she was making it easier. “Maybe,” he said. “But first…I want to show you something.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Maurice beckoned for her to follow him. He led her to a dark corner where he had hidden the bundle, the leather bag wrapped up in his cape. He bent over and picked it up, unravelling the cape and then unfastening the bag’s silver clasp.
“What’s in the bag?” Mary Jane asked. She stood back while he put on the cape and deerstalker hat, and then asked: “Is it a Hallowe’en costume?”
“Kind of.” He turned to her, the cape swirling, the front brim of the deerstalker pulled down over his eyes. “Can you guess who I am?”
“Sherlock Holmes!” Mary Jane said, giggling.
Maurice smiled. “No.”
“The King of England?” She laughed out loud.
“No.” Maurice showed nothing of his anger.
“I give up. Who, then?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Maurice said. “First a game of jacks.”
Mary Jane looked at him admiringly. She seemed to like having him be the leader. She wasn’t like his Mom at all.
“You go first,” he said, knowing that she would do exactly as he told her.
“Okay…but where are the jacks?”
He held up the black bag. “In here.”
Maurice snapped open the clasp and reached inside, feeling around until he found a smaller, plastic bag in there. He pulled it out and dumped the contents on a patch of level ground, between a pile of bricks and the wall. The red, rubber ball and the silver crosses scattered at his feet.
Mary Jane looked at him for a moment before playing. “You’re really weird, Maurice,” she said. “I like you a lot.”
She ran over to him and pecked him on the cheek.
“Play,” Maurice said, gritting his teeth. His fear was shrinking now, consumed by a divine fury.
Mary Jane didn’t seem to notice his simmering rage. She stooped and picked up the ball. Tentatively, she lifted it and bounced it. “Onesies!” she giggled, picking up a jack. “Twosies!” She bounced it again, her little hands snatching two more jacks off the ground. “Threesies!” This time she managed to pick up three. “Foursies!” Mary Jane moved as quickly as she could, deftly picking up the first three, but the ball fell to the ground on the second bounce, before she could get the last jack.
“Aw.” Mary Jane threw down the jacks, stood, and picked up the ball, handing it to Maurice. “Your turn.”
“You did real good, Mary Jane,” said Maurice. He would go through the motions so that she wouldn’t suspect anything. He picked up a ball and studied the random positions of the twelve jacks. Kneeling on the hard ground, he said, “Onesies!”
Maurice only got to threesies, before he failed to get all the jacks.
“Aw, too bad, Maurice,” Mary Jane said, trying to sound sympathetic. She eagerly took up the red ball again, but Maurice clutched her elbow.
“Want to know something?” he said.
“What?”
“Know what they used to play jacks with? In olden times?”
“Uh, uh.” She shook her head.
“Knucklebones. That’s what jacks were called in the old days.”
“Bones?” Mary Jane was astonished. “What kind of bones?”
“I told you—knucklebones.” Maurice let go of her arm and reached into the bag for the scalpel as she knelt to bounce the red ball again. She was into the game. It was time.
Her back was to him now. He pulled her hair back. Before she could cry out, he slid the razor-sharp scalpel blade across the soft flesh of her throat, his hand trembling. The skin resisted and he applied so much pressure his fingers hurt. The knife poked through the skin. Mary Jane made a little moaning sound that turned into a gurgle as he cut. He forgot about everything else as the scalpel separated the flesh. He seemed to be ten feet tall. No, bigger, big as the whole universe. God. Jack the Ripper. From heaven, he looked down at the quaking body beneath him. He savoured the sight for a few seconds and then he pushed her down onto the brick pile, where she flopped like a fish tossed up on shore. When she stopped twitching he bent down and turned her on her back. The blood looked black as it spilled over the bricks in the dim light. Her heart was no longer pumping, so the blood didn’t spurt. He didn’t have to worry about getting any on his clothes.
Maurice put on his rubber gloves and set to work in imitation of the master, God’s chosen, Jack the Ripper. First he dragged the body off the bricks and laid it near the jacks, which he collected. Then he cut open the front of her jacket and blouse. Touching her bare skin excited him, even with the gloves on. He remembered that Jesus had been born unto woman but had resisted the temptations of the flesh.
“Whore!” he cried, shoving the blade into her soft belly. He was stronger now, blessed by the Supreme Being. Using every bit of his strength, he sliced all the way to the crotch, filled with joy, cutting right through her jeans. As soon as he finished the long incision, he set the scalpel down and stuck his fingers inside, pulling the skin apart. The intestines were exposed, coiled inside the girl like a big, meaty Slinky. He reached in and pulled some of them out, juggling them from one hand to the other. They were slippery, steaming in the cool, morning air. The powerful odour of her insides was a vapour, an incense to be smelled only by the Chosen One, Jack the Ripper. He was the Ripper now, revelling in his holy work. He had come a long way since the first one he killed, Peggy Nicholson. Her name had been too much of a coincidence to ignore, that was for sure. It was a sign from God. Each time, he had been given such a sign, sometimes just when he felt like giving up on the whole thing. In Georgia there was Carla Edwards, a name close enough to the Ripper’s fourth victim Catherine Eddowes, that there could be no mistake. Before her, in Texas, there was Lizzie Streiz, whose name could not have been more like “Long” Liz Stride’s, the Ripper’s third. And in Japan, another Army brat called Annie Klazewski. (Annie Chapman, Jack’s second victim, had been the mistress of a Pole, Klosowski.) Peggy Nicholson’s name was almost the same as the Ripper’s first, Polly Nichols. Every time, God had given them names similar to the whores Jack had done in. And every time, Maurice got better and better, always finding the ones God wanted him to take.
Before Peggy, he had only killed a kitten, not long after he had seen the movie about Jack. He had petted it out in the back yard until it trusted him. Then he went in and got a big knife from the kitchen drawer and a chicken leg from the fridge. While the little tiger kitty was eating the chicken, Maurice said a prayer and chopped down on the back of its neck as hard as he could. The cat hissed and Maurice cut it some more. It couldn’t even scratch him. It couldn’t do much of anything after the first chop, just lay there on the flagstone and shake while Maurice sliced it up. It was great.
Something moved behind a brick pile. Maurice snapped to attention, heart pounding in his chest. Had someone sneaked into the gas patch while he was preoccupied? He heard only the sucking of his own laboured breathing, and then a scrabbling noise, the same as before. He caught a glimpse of tiny red eyes in the shadows. A rat.
Relieved, he went back to work, remembering that he couldn’t allow his rapture to interfere with what he was doing. He had almost been apprehe
nded in Japan because he was so caught up in the sight and smell and feel of death. He had to be careful. He was getting tired, too, and sweating a lot. This was hard work. Still, the waves of pleasure washed over him as he slashed and sliced.
Mary Jane didn’t have large enough breasts to cut off, and besides, there wasn’t much time until the bell rang at school. That was always the problem, not enough time. Maybe ten minutes more to work. No time to cut out a kidney, as Jack would have. Maurice had to use his imagination. It was his duty to strike as much terror into the hearts of the sinful as he could.
“I know!” he said. He could actually get some real knucklebones. Stretching Mary Jane’s limp right arm over the rubble, Maurice placed the left hand palm upward on a brick. He withdrew a blade with a serrated edge from his bag and began to saw.
Pinkish, watery stuff oozed out of the finger. There was no danger of getting it on himself if he was cautious.
Unfortunately, the fingers were harder to cut off than he’d thought they’d be. Maurice had to work even harder to get through the bone, his hands, arms and shoulders ached from his efforts, and he was drenched underneath the heavy cape. He discovered that it was easier, once he’d cut through the skin and sinew, to work the finger joints back and forth until they snapped off.
Each finger took about a minute, so he still had time if he hurried. He broke off eight fingers in all, leaving only the thumbs. Mary Jane looked as if she were wearing red mittens. Staring up at the broken ceiling, unblinking, she was much more beautiful than she had been when she was alive. She would never sin again.
Maurice dropped the fingers one by one into a second plastic bag, taking off the rubber gloves and putting them in with the fingers. He wrapped it all up tidily so that the fingers wouldn’t leak onto the medical instruments or the jacks. He wiped the two blades off on Mary Jane’s blouse and carefully placed them in their niches inside his medical bag. The two plastic sacks went in on top of the scalpels, with the deerstalker cap laid over them, covering it all. He snapped the silver clasp shut and took off the cape, wrapping it around the leather bag. It just looked like he had taken off a tweed coat and bundled it up because the weather was too warm for it.
“Goodbye, slut,” he said, carrying his bundle under his left arm and saluting with his free hand. “May God have mercy on your soul.”
Whistling, he walked up the hill towards the school, leaving the remains of Mary Jane Toricelli to the rats.
Right after lunch, a policewoman came to talk to Maurice’s science teacher, Mr. Stubbs. The two adults left the room for a few minutes, and the place erupted in a spitball fight. Maurice joined in so that he wouldn’t be conspicuous, while waiting to see what, if anything, Mr. Stubbs would say when he got back.
Mr. Stubbs was gone a long time. Finally, Buddy Hopkins said he was going to find out what was going on. He had to go to the bathroom anyway, so he would check it out.
When he came back, Buddy announced that just about every teacher in the school was gathered in the principal’s office along with the policewoman and a black policeman. “This is big stuff,” he said.
Shortly after that, Mr. Stubbs returned with the policewoman, holding up his hands for order. Something about the way he looked and sounded stopped the spitballs right away, which was unusual.
“Kids,” he said, looking even older and greyer than usual. “There’s been an accident.”
An accident? What was the old fool talking about?
“Officer Cooper is here to ask you a few questions. When she’s finished, you can all go home.”
There was some sporadic cheering, but that soon stopped as Officer Cooper commanded their attention.
“I have to know if any of you saw a girl named Mary Jane Toricelli this morning, between seven and eight o’clock.”
“That would be just before the first bell,” Mr. Stubbs interjected.
There was an awkward silence in the classroom, and then a fat girl named Carmen Gifford raised her hand. “I saw her on the bus.”
“Did you see her after that?” Officer Cooper asked.
“No.”
“When you saw her on the bus, who was she talking to?”
“A couple of girls. She rides with them every morning.”
“Are they in this class?”
“No.”
“Do you know their names?”
“One of them.”
And so it went. Carmen gave Officer Cooper the girl’s name, Officer Cooper thanked the kids, and Mr. Stubbs, who really looked nervous and sick, told everybody to go home. Ordinarily, the kids would have been making a lot of noise, happy about getting out of school early, but they were strangely silent now as they filed out to their lockers.
“What’s that?” Andy McHugh said as Maurice pulled out the bundle and slammed shut his locker door.
“What?” Maurice said, playing dumb.
“That thing you’re holding there, Turner. What is it?”
“Oh, just a coat.”
“Looks like a coat your father would wear.” Andy kept looking at the bundle. “You got something wrapped up in it?”
“Just some books,” Maurice lied.
Andy, who was more than a head taller than Maurice and more than two years older, placed one palm on the lockers on either side of Maurice, hemming him in. “I know you better than that, Moe-rees.”
Maurice glared at him. He hated to be called that. Andy was making fun of his southern accent, the only kid in school who still did that.
“The teachers around here might be fooled by you,” Andy said. “But I’m not. I know you’re nuts.”
“Get out of my way, McHugh,” Maurice said angrily.
“Chill out, kid,” Andy said, stepping back to let him go. “I only want to know what you’re up to. Got any more of those chopping things like you had yesterday?”
“No, Mrs. Rainey took it when I was sent to her office.” Maurice started walking. “I gotta go.”
“You sure you don’t have something in there?” Andy demanded.
“Nope. Nothing.” Maurice was almost running now, out the front door and into the street, leaving Andy McHugh and his prying questions behind. He ran around the corner, past Popi’s and a row of brownstones. When he was quite sure he was rid of Andy, he walked to the stop where kids who were unlucky enough to live in the Army base housing waited for their bus. It was only a little past noon. He would go to the Greyhound station, ditching the stuff he was carrying temporarily in a locker there, and walk the few blocks to the base to see his Dad. Maybe he could get some money out of the old man. It usually worked.
Everything went without a hitch at the bus station, and the guard at the base was so used to seeing him that he didn’t even have to show his ID to get through the gate.
He found his Dad in the officers’ mess, the bars on his uniform shining brightly, as he drank coffee at a table with a couple of other men. He seemed like a different person than he was at home. Kind of relaxed and important around the other officers. If only they knew what he was really like.
“Hello, son,” his Dad said, and the others said hello to him too. “What are you doing here on a schoolday afternoon?”
“They let us out early today…on account of an accident a girl had.”
“Well, that’s too bad about the girl.” Dad frowned. “But I guess you aren’t too unhappy about getting the afternoon off, huh?”
Maurice said nothing. His Dad got out his wallet and gave him twenty dollars. “Catch a bus for downtown and go to that movie we missed last night…but don’t mention it to your mother.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Maurice said. “Don’t worry. I won’t say anything.”
His Dad winked, and the other men all laughed. Maurice said goodbye and was off to catch his bus.
—
It had been a pretty good movie, entitled Maimed, with plenty of gory violence. It was about a guy who had been mutilated in an accident. When the people responsible got off scot-free by bribi
ng the judge who heard the case, he went around killing them all, saving the judge for last, using chainsaws, buzz-saws, butcher knives, straight razors, and even a Veg-O-Matic. No one under 17 was supposed to get in, but the sleazebag behind the ticket window didn’t even look at him, just tore up the ticket and that was it.
It was 3:30 when Maurice emerged, blinking, into the daylight. He was still exhilarated from doing the Lord’s work this morning. Unless Mary Jane had told one of the girls on the bus, he was home free. He had the bundle with him, which he had picked up at the Greyhound station after leaving the base. He’d better catch a bus for home right away. If his mother was there when he got in—and not on her prayer planet—he’d catch hell for being late. He wished that he had left the bundle in the locker.
Maurice got off a block from the house. When he got home, he didn’t go right in. Instead, he crept up to a window. His mother was turning off the TV, no doubt having just watched The 700 Club or one of the other evangelist programmes. She walked toward the back of the house, probably to the kitchen. She might stop him when he came in and demand to see what he was carrying. He had better find some place to hide it.
Around the side of the house, Maurice was surprised to see the car in the driveway. He checked his watch and saw that it was almost 4:30. No, it wasn’t that unusual to see his Dad home this early, now that he thought about it. Maurice was the one who was late today. There was no way he was going to get the bundle past both his mother and his father.
Maurice tried the car door on the passenger’s side. It was unlocked. He opened it as quietly as he could and placed the bundle on the floor of the back seat. Squinting with concentration, he closed it again, barely making a sound. Then he walked back around the front of the house, keeping his head down.
“I’m home,” he said as he walked in the front door, deciding to take the bull by the horns.
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 34